14-Year-Old Detroit Boy Pleads Guilty To Killing Mother In Her Sleep

Joshua Smith (pictured), a 14-year-old boy, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and a felony firearm charge on Monday for shooting his mother dead while she slept on the coach inside her east side home in Detroit, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The teenager will spend between 27 and 52 years in prison. Charged as an adult for the crime, he will be sentenced on Oct. 26. Police say the boy broke into a home safe and recovered his stepfather’s gun and shot multiple rounds into her on Feb. 27. Smith and his mother, Tamika Robinson, had been arguing over him bringing female friends to the home as well as boys she felt were “thugs.”

Robinson’s fiance, Chiko Lewis, testified at Smith’s preliminary examination in March that he was asleep in the home when he heard the gunshots, the Detroit News reports.

Here is what he said, according to The News:

Lewis said he attempted to escape with his 5-year-old daughter tucked underneath his arm and saw Robinson, 36, had been struck by bullets and was bleeding near the foot of the stairs.

“Blood was just pouring,” Lewis previously testified in 36th District Court. “She was lying there taking awful, gasping deep breaths.”

Lewis said he then began to beg for his own life, when he noticed Smith on the staircase above him.

“He was holding my shotgun and pointing it directly at me,” Lewis said. “I had my daughter in my arms. I was just saying, ‘Please, please, please.'”

When police interviewed the teen on the night he killed his mother, he said she had “cussed him out” prior to the shooting.

“She kept calling me all those names and stuff,” Smith said, according to the statement previously read in district court.